This invention relates to teeming ladles, for example, for steel, more particularly to an improvement for cooling the ladle nozzle while the ladle is in use.
Ladle nozzles are refractory bricks lining the wall of the ladle runner (casting channel). Contact of the steel with the refractory brick during teeming erodes the nozzle. Also, when the ladle is returned to maintenance after teeming the runner is still full of largely solidified steel. This carrot or plug of steel must be burnt off with an oxygen lance so as to clean the nozzle wall. In this operation there is severe deterioration of the nozzle because the tip of the burner flame produces at the point of contact a very substantial temperature rise and, therefore, damages the inside surface.
Also, the runner wall in the stationary fixed plate of the teeming system, the plate being disposed below the ladle base, wears very appreciably because of the high temperature of the steel.